The Gorilla Radio archive can be found at: www.Gorilla-Radio.com. G-Radio is dedicated to social justice, the environment, community, and providing a forum for people and issues not covered in State and Corporate media. Gorilla Radio airs live Thursdays between 11-12 noon Pacific Time. Airing in Victoria at 101.9FM, and featured on the internet at: http://cfuv.ca and www.pacificfreepress.com. And check out Pacific Free Press on Twitter @Paciffreepress

Saturday, December 06, 2008

Gwynne Dyer: Four harsh truths about climate changeBy Gwynne DyerFood will be the key issue as temperatures rise more quickly than expected.

About two years ago, I realized that militaries in various countries were starting to do climate-change scenarios in-house—scenarios that started with the scientific predictions about rising temperatures, falling crop yields, and other physical effects, and then examined what that would do to politics and strategy.

The scenarios predicted failed states proliferating because governments couldn’t feed their people; waves of climate refugees washing up against the borders of more fortunate countries; and even wars between countries that share rivers. So I started interviewing everybody I could get access to, not only senior military people but scientists, diplomats, and politicians.

About 70 interviews, a dozen countries, and 18 months later, I have reached four conclusions that I didn’t even suspect when I began the process. The first is simply this: the scientists are really scared. Their observations over the past two or three years suggest that everything is happening a lot faster than climate models predicted.

This creates a dilemma, because for the past decade they have been struggling against a well-funded campaign that cast doubt on climate change. Now, finally, people and even governments are listening. Even in the United States, the world headquarters of climate-change denial, 85 percent of the population now sees climate change as a major issue, and both major presidential candidates promised 80-percent cuts in American emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050.

The scientists are understandably reluctant at this point to announce publicly that their predictions were wrong, that it’s really much worse, and that the targets will have to be revised. Most of them are waiting for overwhelming proof that climate change really is moving faster, even though they are already privately convinced that it is.

The second conclusion is that the generals are right. Food is the key issue, and the world food supply is already very tight: we have eaten up about two-thirds of the world grain reserve in the past five years, leaving only 50 days’ worth in store. A 1°C (1.8°F) rise in average global temperature will take a major bite out of food production in almost all countries that are closer to the equator than to the poles, and that includes almost all of the planet’s “breadbaskets”.

So the international grain market will wither for lack of supplies. Countries that can no longer feed their people will not be able to buy their way out of trouble by importing grain from elsewhere, even if they have the money. Starving refugees will flood across borders, whole nations will collapse into anarchy—and some countries may make a grab for their neighbours’ land or water.

These are scenarios that the Pentagon and other military planning staffs are examining now. They could start to come true as little as 15 or 20 years down the road. If this kind of breakdown becomes widespread, there will be little chance of making or keeping global agreements to curb greenhouse-gas emissions and avoid further warming.

The third conclusion is that there is a point of no return after which warming becomes unstoppable—and we are probably going to sail right through it. It is the point at which anthropogenic (human-caused) warming triggers huge releases of carbon dioxide from warming oceans, or similar releases of both carbon dioxide and methane from melting permafrost, or both. Most climate scientists think that point lies not far beyond 2°C (3.6°F) hotter.

Once that point is passed, the human race loses control: cutting our own emissions may not stop the warming. But we are almost certainly going to miss our deadline. We cannot get the 10 lost years back, and by the time a new global agreement to replace the Kyoto accord is negotiated and put into effect, there will probably not be enough time left to stop the warming short of the point where we must not go.

So—final conclusion—we will have to cheat. In the past two years, various scientists have suggested several “geoengineering” techniques for holding the temperature down directly. We might put a kind of temporary chemical sunscreen in the stratosphere by seeding it with sulphur particles, for example, or we could artificially thicken low-lying maritime clouds to reflect more sunlight.

These are not permanent solutions; they are merely ways of winning more time to cut our emissions without triggering runaway warming in the meantime. But the situation is getting very grave, and we are probably going to see the first experiments with these techniques within five years.

There is a way through this crisis, but it isn’t easy and there is no guarantee of success. As the Irishman said to the lost traveller: “If that’s where you want to go, sir, I wouldn’t start from here.”

Gwynne Dyer will be speaking on his new book, Climate Wars, at the Park Theatre (Cambie and 18th) in Vancouver on December 6 and 7 at 1 p.m. Tickets available from www.festivalcinemas.ca/ or at the door.

I drive an American car. It's a Chrysler. That's not an endorsement. It's more like a cry for pity. And now for a decades-old story, retold ad infinitum by tens of millions of Americans, a third of whom have had to desert their country to simply find a damn way to get to work in something that won't break down:

My Chrysler is four years old. I bought it because of its smooth and comfortable ride. Daimler-Benz owned the company then and had the good grace to place the Chrysler chassis on a Mercedes axle and, man, was that a sweet ride!

When it would start.

More than a dozen times in these years, the car has simply died. Batteries have been replaced, but that wasn't the problem. My dad drives the same model. His car has died many times, too. Just won't start, for no reason at all.

A few weeks ago, I took my Chrysler in to the Chrysler dealer here in northern Michigan -- and the latest fixes cost me $1,400. The next day, the vehicle wouldn't start. When I got it going, the brake warning light came on. And on and on.

You might assume from this that I couldn't give a rat's ass about these miserably inept crapmobile makers down the road in Detroit city. But I do care. I care about the millions whose lives and livelihoods depend on these car companies. I care about the security and defense of this country because the world is running out of oil -- and when it runs out, the calamity and collapse that will take place will make the current recession/depression look like a Tommy Tune musical.

And I care about what happens with the Big 3 because they are more responsible than almost anyone for the destruction of our fragile atmosphere and the daily melting of our polar ice caps.

Congress must save the industrial infrastructure that these companies control and the jobs they create. And it must save the world from the internal combustion engine. This great, vast manufacturing network can redeem itself by building mass transit and electric/hybrid cars, and the kind of transportation we need for the 21st century.

And Congress must do all this by NOT giving GM, Ford and Chrysler the $34 billion they are asking for in "loans" (a few days ago they only wanted $25 billion; that's how stupid they are -- they don't even know how much they really need to make this month's payroll. If you or I tried to get a loan from the bank this way, not only would we be thrown out on our ear, the bank would place us on some sort of credit rating blacklist).

Two weeks ago, the CEOs of the Big 3 were tarred and feathered before a Congressional committee who sneered at them in a way far different than when the heads of the financial industry showed up two months earlier. At that time, the politicians tripped over each other in their swoon for Wall Street and its Ponzi schemers who had concocted Byzantine ways to bet other people's money on unregulated credit default swaps, known in the common vernacular as unicorns and fairies.

But the Detroit boys were from the Midwest, the Rust (yuk!) Belt, where they made real things that consumers needed and could touch and buy, and that continually recycled money into the economy (shocking!), produced unions that created the middle class, and fixed my teeth for free when I was ten.

For all of that, the auto heads had to sit there in November and be ridiculed about how they traveled to D.C. Yes, they flew on their corporate jets, just like the bankers and Wall Street thieves did in October. But, hey, THAT was OK! They're the Masters of the Universe! Nothing but the best chariots for Big Finance as they set about to loot our nation's treasury.

Of course, the auto magnates used be the Masters who ruled the world. They were the pulsating hub that all other industries -- steel, oil, cement contractors -- served. Fifty-five years ago, the president of GM sat on that same Capitol Hill and bluntly told Congress, what's good for General Motors is good for the country. Because, you see, in their minds, GM WAS the country.

What a long, sad fall from grace we witnessed on November 19th when the three blind mice had their knuckles slapped and then were sent back home to write an essay called, "Why You Should Give Me Billions of Dollars of Free Cash." They were also asked if they would work for a dollar a year. Take that! What a big, brave Congress they are! Requesting indentured servitude from (still) three of the most powerful men in the world. This from a spineless body that won't dare stand up to a disgraced president nor turn down a single funding request for a war that neither they nor the American public support. Amazing.

Let me just state the obvious: Every single dollar Congress gives these three companies will be flushed right down the toilet. There is nothing the management teams of the Big 3 are going to do to convince people to go out during a recession and buy their big, gas-guzzling, inferior products. Just forget it. And, as sure as I am that the Ford family-owned Detroit Lions are not going to the Super Bowl -- ever -- I can guarantee you, after they burn through this $34 billion, they'll be back for another $34 billion next summer.

So what to do? Members of Congress, here's what I propose:

1. Transporting Americans is and should be one of the most important functions our government must address. And because we are facing a massive economic, energy and environmental crisis, the new president and Congress must do what Franklin Roosevelt did when he was faced with a crisis (and ordered the auto industry to stop building cars and instead build tanks and planes): The Big 3 are, from this point forward, to build only cars that are not primarily dependent on oil and, more importantly to build trains, buses, subways and light rail (a corresponding public works project across the country will build the rail lines and tracks). This will not only save jobs, but create millions of new ones.

2. You could buy ALL the common shares of stock in General Motors for less than $3 billion. Why should we give GM $18 billion or $25 billion or anything? Take the money and buy the company! (You're going to demand collateral anyway if you give them the "loan," and because we know they will default on that loan, you're going to own the company in the end as it is. So why wait? Just buy them out now.)

3. None of us want government officials running a car company, but there are some very smart transportation geniuses who could be hired to do this. We need a Marshall Plan to switch us off oil-dependent vehicles and get us into the 21st century.

This proposal is not radical or rocket science. It just takes one of the smartest people ever to run for the presidency to pull it off. What I'm proposing has worked before. The national rail system was in shambles in the '70s. The government took it over. A decade later it was turning a profit, so the government returned it to private/public hands, and got a couple billion dollars put back in the treasury.

This proposal will save our industrial infrastructure -- and millions of jobs. More importantly, it will create millions more. It literally could pull us out of this recession.

In contrast, yesterday General Motors presented its restructuring proposal to Congress. They promised, if Congress gave them $18 billion now, they would, in turn, eliminate around 20,000 jobs. You read that right. We give them billions so they can throw more Americans out of work. That's been their Big Idea for the last 30 years -- layoff thousands in order to protect profits. But no one ever stopped to ask this question: If you throw everyone out of work, who's going to have the money to go out and buy a car?

These idiots don't deserve a dime. Fire all of them, and take over the industry for the good of the workers, the country and the planet.

What's good for General Motors IS good for the country. Once the country is calling the shots.

Yours,Michael MooreMMFlint@aol.comMichaelMoore.com

P.S. I will be on Keith Olbermann tonight (8pm/10pm/midnight ET) to discuss this further on MSNBC.

The British Columbia Health Ministry hosted a second closed-door meeting on Friday for "stakeholders" -- mainly representatives of big pharmaceutical companies -- wanting to make changes to the province's drug approval process.

Private Clinics Patients to sue B.C government over allegations of doctors' extra billing The Canadian Press Published: December 4, 2008

VANCOUVER, B.C. - The B.C. government has failed to enforce its own laws that ban doctors from billing both patients and the public health-care system, say a group of patients who have launched a lawsuit against the province. Read more...

VICTORIA -- Residential care facilities for B.C.'s senior citizens are critically underfunded, the association representing those facilities said Tuesday as it called for an additional $81 million a year just to increase staffing. Read more...

National Canadian Health Coalition renews call for national pharmacare program

Charlottetown Guardian Published: December 3, 2008

Islanders are playing a prominent role in the Canadian Health Coalition’s renewed call Tuesday for a national pharmacare program, both as advocates for a new program and as sad examples of the many who are being failed by the current system. Read more...

Op/Ed Fight poverty to improve economic and social healthCanada's inequality and poverty rates are among the highest in the developed world By Roy Romanow. Toronto StarPublished: December 2, 2008

The loud bang of the global economic crisis has drowned out the quieter sounds of many other pressing and related concerns.

As governments search for solutions to shore up our economic health in the short term, they must resist the temptation to put all other issues on the back-burner. The choices are very difficult and painful. I know, I've been there. But we need to think long-term, not just short-term Read more...

WASHINGTON — Private health insurance plans, which serve nearly a fourth of all Medicare beneficiaries, have increased the cost and complexity of the program without any evidence of improving care, researchers say in studies to be published Monday. Read more...

Friday, December 05, 2008

Dear Free Range Fan, Did you know that the Bush Administration built hundreds of detention facilities resembling the infamous Guantanamo Bay right here on American soil? And they don't hold suspected terrorists. Instead, they are "home" to thousands of immigrants, many of whom have never been convicted of any crime.

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As the incoming Obama administration looks to roll back the worst of Bush's policies we need your VOICE to get the story of Homeland Guantanamos out to the public. The New York Times has already featured the game and with your help, we can bring this issue to our new president's immediate attention.

Click here to play the groundbreaking game and make sure that the era of U.S. human rights abuse comes quickly to a close.

Thursday, December 04, 2008

Millions of birds at risk from tar sandsBoreal forest disruption, fragmentation may mean loss of up to 166 million birdsScott Harris / scott@vueweekly.com

Millions of birds that depend on the Boreal forest could be lost over the next half-century due to planned tar sands development in northern Alberta, according to a new report.

“The Boreal forest tar sands area is incredibly important for birds as a breeding habitat and as a globally important flyway for a great adundance and diversity of wetland-dependent birds,” reads the report. “Unfortunately the rapidly expanding industrial tar sands oil extraction operations increasingly put these birds at risk.”

The report, entitled Danger in the Nursery, estimates that between six million and 166 million birds could be lost over the next 30 to 50 years due to a combination of surface mining, landings on toxic tailings ponds and habitat destruction and fragmentation from infrastructure related to in-situ operations.

“Based on our estimates that could mean 10 to 50 per cent of the forest-dependent birds of the Boreal forest of Alberta could be lost, which is a pretty astounding number,” says Jeff Wells, the report’s lead author and a senior scientist with the US-based Boreal Songbird Initiative, which produced the report along with the Pembina Institute and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The projected impacts are based on the habitat densities of breeding birds in the Boreal—estimated by the Canadian Wildlife Service at between 0.64 and 4.86 per acre—over the roughly 14 million hectares that could be developed for tar sands operations.

Surface strip-mining projects, which are projected to impact as much as 300 000 hectares over the next 30 to 50 years, will result in the loss of habitat for between 480 000 and 3.6 million adult birds.

“In addition, this loss of breeding habitat represents a loss of opportunity for continued production of young birds by future breeding adults,” reads the report, meaning an additional loss of up to 36 million young birds over a 20-year period and up to 72 million over a 40-year timeframe.

Pointing out that losses resulting from incidents like the 500 ducks which died after landing on a Syncrude tailings pond in May are likely underestimated by industry reports, Wells says an additional 8000 to 100 000 birds annually could be dying from “oiling events” related to existing tailings ponds, and a doubling in the number of ponds due to increased mining activity could bring that number to between 17 000 and 300 000 annually.

The most significant impact on bird populations, however, will come from future development of in-situ projects, which will use steam injection to recover the 80 per cent of proven reserves that are too deep for recovery through surface mining.

Despite having a smaller footprint than mining operations, in-situ operations require a network of roads, well pads and compressor stations. Current leases for in-situ operations will remove 485 000 hectares of Boreal, resulting in a loss of between 777 000 and 5.8 million birds. That number could increase to as high as 14.5 million if leases are extended to the entire tar sands region.

“The in-situ especially is the hidden cost to wildlife because it occurs over such a vast area, or is projected to eventually,” explains Wells. “What it also does is cause the habitat to be split up into small islands of forest and wetlands. The ways this fragmentation affects wildlife are many, but they include things like changes in hydrology and microclimate, which affects actually the habitat and the species that can occur there—plant and animal. It changes the predator populations. And then more recently we’ve discovered that fragmentation actually disrupts the social structure of bird populations. So there’s a whole host of ways that fragmentation can cause reductions in bird densities.”

Such fragmentation, the report says, could result in the loss of up to 76 million birds over a 30 to 50 year period.

“Taken together these estimates could mean that as many as 166 million birds may be lost if tar sands development continues without some kind of major change,” says Wells. “Amazingly, these numbers do not even include the effects of airborne and waterborne pollutants, toxins, impacts from water withdrawal, external infrastructure development including pipelines, and from global warming. We still don’t even have enough information to estimate the total losses from those.”

Brad Bellows, a spokesperson with Suncor, which currently has both surface mining and in-situ operations in northern Alberta, acknowledges that some impacts on wildlife are unavoidable, but he questions the scale of the predictions contained in the report.

“I do find in the report that the data seems to assume unconstrained and somewhat implausible scenarios,” Bellows says. “It seems to assume that all potential mining projects will go ahead nearly simultaneously, absent any parallel reclamation process, any technology improvement. So it seems like the authors were striving for such a worst-case scenario that it actually beggars belief.”

Bellows says that as part of the regulatory process for approvals in the tar sands, companies are required to report any wildlife mortality to the province, and the numbers that Suncor has tracked are nothing like the estimates in the report. He offers as an example Suncor’s reports to regulators on bird deaths from landings on tailings ponds: “We would typically have an average between 2001 and 2007 of about eight birds per year. And that’s where I’m interested in the source of some of the projections in this report. There’s some very large numbers which seem implausible.”

While he disputes the report’s estimates, Bellows says that Suncor is trying to minimize its impact on bird and other animal populations.

“For the general mined areas really the long-term mitigation is reclamation. As an example, we have an area called Crane Lake that was an area that was disturbed and has been reclaimed to a wetland and in that area we’ve had documented over 129 bird species, with 43 species taking up residency in the lake area.”

He does admit that Suncor needs to do a better job of reclaiming the 95 000 hectares the company has disturbed to date.

“Total land reclaimed from land we’ve disturbed is now about 10 per cent of total disturbance, but we’re obviously looking to accelerate the pace of reclamation,” he says.

Bellows adds that for its in-situ operations Suncor tries to mitigate the impact on birds and other wildlife through approaches such as narrow cutlines which are meandered to reduce sight lines for predators and returning removed material to cutlines as mulch to speed reclamation.Despite challenging the numbers, Bellows says he agrees with a number of the recommendations in the report.

“I think if you strip away some of the hyperbole in the summary report, the recommendations that are in there are things that are moving along: looking at the need for a broadly coordinated approach to land-use planning, for example, that’s something that’s expected next year to the government of Alberta’s land-use framework. So I think that there’s directionally a lot of things that we would agree with.”

Other recommendations aimed at government include fully implementing national laws and international treaties aimed at protecting migratory birds, and strengthening and enforcing regulations around waste management, water withdrawals, pollution levels and habitat destruction and reclamation.

The report calls for a moratorium on new development until adequate conservation measures are in place and says that ultimately we need to move away from dependence on the tar sands through improvements in vehicle efficiency and limiting the production of high-carbon fuels, but Wells says it also points to plenty that industry can do in the meantime to minimize impacts on the Boreal.

“There’s actually a list of different ways that different groups have come up with trying to make the process itself less harmful,” Wells says. “It includes everything from thinking about ways to lower emissions to using dry tailings ponds instead of the current wet tailings to decreasing the size of corridors to trying to find real ways to reclaim habitat that’s lost, which no one’s figured out how to do right yet. So there are lots of ways to move forward but it’s going to be a slow process.

“In the meantime we think the prudent approach to having meaningful change is to think about implementing a land-use plan that includes protecting 40 per cent of northeastern Alberta and that we should have interim protection for areas that have already been identified as important and to think about opportunities like mitigation, including off-site mitigation. So there’s actually some things that could be done quickly and easily now.”

Got something to say? Send a letter to the editor.letters@vueweekly.com

Sunday, November 30, 2008

The NDP and Liberals have reached a deal to topple the minority Conservative government and take power themselves in a coalition, CBC News has learned.

A deal has been negotiated between NDP Leader Jack Layton and Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion that would see them form a coalition government for two and a half years, the CBC's Keith Boag reported, citing sources.

The NDP would be invited into cabinet and get 25 per cent of seats, Boag said, adding that the party wouldn't get the position of the finance chair or the deputy prime minister's post.

The Bloc Québécois wouldn't be a part of the coalition, but would have to support it, he said.

"The most difficult question is who'll be the leader," Boag said, adding that Dion, who negotiated the deal, believes he has the right to be prime minister.

Opposition parties say they have lost confidence in the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper after Thursday's economic update by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty failed to provide a stimulus package for Canadians.

Since then, the Liberals have been in negotiations to form a coalition with the NDP, and the concessions made by the Conservatives this weekend have done nothing to change the party's view that Harper must go.

'Armed police would not fire back. – I wish I'd had a gun, not a camera'

Jerome Taylor talks to the photographer whose picture went around the world

Saturday, 29 November 2008

Independent.co.uk Web

It is the photograph that has dominated the world's front pages, casting an astonishing light on the fresh-faced killers who brought terror to the heart of India's most vibrant city. Now The Independent can reveal how the astonishing picture came to be taken by a newspaper photographer who hid inside a train carriage as gunfire erupted all around him.

Sebastian D'Souza, a picture editor at the Mumbai Mirror, whose offices are just opposite the city's Chhatrapati Shivaji station, heard the gunfire erupt and ran towards the terminus. "I ran into the first carriage of one of the trains on the platform to try and get a shot but couldn't get a good angle, so I moved to the second carriage and waited for the gunmen to walk by," he said. "They were shooting from waist height and fired at anything that moved. I briefly had time to take a couple of frames using a telephoto lens. I think they saw me taking photographs but theydidn't seem to care."

The gunmen were terrifyingly professional, making sure at least one of them was able to fire their rifle while the other reloaded. By the time he managed to capture the killer on camera, Mr D'Souza had already seen two gunmen calmly stroll across the station concourse shooting both civilians and policemen, many of whom, he said, were armed but did not fire back. "I first saw the gunmen outside the station," Mr D'Souza said. "With their rucksacks and Western clothes they looked like backpackers, not terrorists, but they were very heavily armed and clearly knew how to use their rifles.

"Towards the station entrance, there are a number of bookshops and one of the bookstore owners was trying to close his shop," he recalled. "The gunmen opened fire and the shopkeeper fell down."

But what angered Mr D'Souza almost as much were the masses of armed police hiding in the area who simply refused to shoot back. "There were armed policemen hiding all around the station but none of them did anything," he said. "At one point, I ran up to them and told them to use their weapons. I said, 'Shoot them, they're sitting ducks!' but they just didn't shoot back."

As the gunmen fired at policemen taking cover across the street, Mr D'Souza realised a train was pulling into the station unaware of the horror within. "I couldn't believe it. We rushed to the platform and told everyone to head towards the back of the station. Those who were older and couldn't run, we told them to stay put."

The militants returned inside the station and headed towards a rear exit towards Chowpatty Beach. Mr D'Souza added: "I told some policemen the gunmen had moved towards the rear of the station but they refused to follow them. What is the point if having policemen with guns if they refuse to use them? I only wish I had a gun rather than a camera."

Mr. Giorno's message included very detailed scripts MPs are expected to follow while delivering radio interviews that include the following lines:

We're not even two months removed from the last election, and a group of backroom politicians are going to pick who the Prime Minister is. Canadians didn't vote for this person. We don't even know who this person will be.

Not a single voter voted for a Liberal-NDP coalition. Certainly not a single voter voted for the Liberals to form a coalition with the separatists in the Bloc.

This is what bothers me the most. The Conservatives won the election. The Opposition keeps saying that the Conservatives have to respect the will of the voters that this is a minority and so on.

…how about Liberals, NDP and Bloc respecting the will of the voters when they said "YOU LOSE".

And what's this going to do to the economy. I'm sorry, I don't care how desperate the Liberals are — giving socialists (Jack Layton) and separatists (Gilles Duceppe) a veto over every decision in government — that is a recipe for total economic disaster.

But how more phony could these guys be?

I mean, I follow the news, virtually every single day you have Harper or Flaherty out there telegraphing exactly what they plan to do with the economy. And not once did you hear the Liberals, NDP or separatists talking about toppling the government in response.

No — do you know what set this off. When Flaherty said he was going to take taxpayer-funded subsidies away from the opposition. Now there is a reason to try and overturn an election— because the Conservatives the audacity to say "Hey, it's a recession, maybe you should take your nose out of the trough."

And I wish the media would be more clear on this point — the opposition aren't being singled out by this fact the Conservatives stand to lose the most money of all. The only difference is that Canadians are voluntarily giving money the Conservatives, so they don't need taxpayer handouts. The only reason the opposition would be hurt more is because nobody wants to donate to them. They should be putting their efforts towards fixing that problem.

I don't want another election. But what I want even less is a surprise backroom Prime Minister whom I never even had the opportunity to vote for or against. What an insult to democracy.